Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Alisyn Camerota

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Alisyn Camerota went from a punk rock teen to a respected journalist anchoring for CNN, and now she is an author sharing her story of survival and success in her new memoir, "Combat Love."  Alisyn opens up to Sophia about chasing her dreams of being a journalist, her experience working at Fox News under Roger Ailes, including sexual harassment, not buying into their mission statement, and transitioning from Fox to rival network CNN.  Alisyn also talks about her decision to write a memoir, how writing helped heal her relationship with her mother, and the power of music in her life!  Alisyn Camerota's new book, "Combat Love: A Story of Leaving, Longing, and Searching for Home," is available now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hi, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello, Whip Smarties. We have a Smarty on the podcast today. I am joined by Alison Camerota. She is, an American broadcast journalist and a political commentator for CNN. She formerly was an anchor of CNN's morning news show, New Day, the co-host of the afternoon edition of CNN Newsroom, and she served as host of CNN Tonight from 2022 to 2023, and Allison came from a history at Fox News.

I have so many questions for her about what it was like to go and work for a competitor, and I'm really curious about her experience during the meeting. era at Fox. She has been an incredible voice, both about her own experiences and also as an anchor for a number of primetime specials on the topic, including tipping point, sexual harassment in America, and The Hunting Ground, Sexual Assault on Campus. She is really an incredible advocate and an incredible journalist. And today I'm really looking forward to hearing about her making the leap from anchor to author. She's just released her memory. more called Combat Love, which is the story of two women, mother and daughter, trying to forge their own paths and independence and find their own happiness, success, and wholeness.

I really am amazed at how vulnerable she chose to be in this book and how she really brings us into her world of nurture and neglect, parenting, and personal freedom, and helps us ask the questions, what are we willing to sacrifice for self-actualization and happiness? Let's dive in with Allison. Hi, Allison. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Great. Thank you. I'm so thrilled to have you here today. Thank you. I was doing a shoot earlier today about an hour north of my home. And I got the time wrong. So I thought that I was talking to you at one my time. And so I was in the back office of a grocery store chain, which is like the least glamorous, grittiest place

you've ever seen. It had, you know, like an old calendar, not from this year. And like things taped up and just like ratty bags. And I was like, oh, this is going to be a glamorous shoot with Sophia. She's going to really get a gist of my job. I totally get. edit. It's so funny. I think whether you know, you're working in the news or or in the sort of film and television side like I am, isn't it always wild when people come visit you on set and they go, wait, wait, this is not what I thought. And you're like, yeah, because you see a produced news show or you see people like at the Golden Globes and you don't know like how insane the places where the media gets made to get it to that stage. You know, it's so funny. Totally. Totally. People are like,

this is your green room coffee it's bile you know yeah i know i love it well i you know jokes aside obviously i think you know i'm such just a lover of the news and i think you know USC Annenberg school of journalism student me would not believe that i get to be here and interview so many journalists that i love and admire so thank you for coming to join me on the show today. My pleasure. And so you went to the school of communication or journalism? Yeah, journalism. I went to USC to get a BFA in theater.

And for me, just realized that the intensity of the program felt too narrow for me. I had so many other interests in, you know, political science and the way the world works. and I found journalism and a theater combo to be the perfect sort of equation for me in school because I got to really lean into what makes real stories so special and how to communicate them well. And I think that, you know, it's influenced my work certainly as an activist and I think certainly as an actor because you've got to kind of find the truth and the thing you're doing if you're making a TV show or, you know, writing an op-ed about somebody. So I really loved it.

That's very cool. And I really appreciate what you're saying because storytelling is the bridge, you know, storytelling is the link between so many of our careers, whether it's acting, whether it's a singer. It's not just in the arts. I mean, even public policy lawmakers, it's all about storytelling. And so I always realize that, and particularly with the book and being an author, I feel like those telling our stories is what is the bridge between us. regardless of what you do, you know?

Yeah, and I love, and I can't wait to dive into the book with you because to read such a personal story, you know, this kind of excavation work of family, and certainly I think what women inherit through their familial line is so inspiring to me, and I loved the way that you did this. And you're saying something that really makes me think, you know, whether you're, you're saying, it's you as a journalist going and writing a memoir like this or, you know, what I have to figure out if I'm going to go make a new movie or something. I even think about it. My girlfriend, Jessica Malati, Rivera, whose work I'm sure you saw a lot during the pandemic, you know, she's an incredible

scientist and helped really lead the forefront of the COVID tracking project and so much advocacy for us. And she pointed out that in the science and medical community, there has been such a lack of emphasis on the storytelling and that her job, you know, the way she thinks of science is science isn't finished until it's been clearly communicated and in particular to non-scientists. And so when I think about these ways that so many of us are realizing if we can't tell our stories to each other and have them heard, we're failing the kind of human experiment in a way. And it, I guess I wonder, was kind of part of that craving to communicate what led you

to say, okay, I'm really going to do it. I'm going to work on this book. Or was it something else? No, it was exactly that. I mean, my, what prompted me is that we all wear masks. I mean, in your career, obviously, you play a part, and we all wear these masks. And in the news, you are playing a part. You're playing yourself, but you're playing a very polished version of yourself.

And so I started to think, because this is what I always connected with the viewers. I always connected with my interview subjects, but people would sometimes share with me the impression that, like, well, you must have had an easy life, Alison, or like, you know, things have worked out. so beautifully for you, look at how great you look, you know, and I realized, oh, the mask is too convincing, you know, like it's when I have the fake eyelashes on and the perfectly quaffed hair and the jewel tones, that that can give the impression that it's been easy, but of course, it hasn't been easy. And that in that way, it was a divide, you know, the screen itself is a divider between us. And so I just felt like peeling off the mask might, be a bridge and help people understand, oh, no. Yes, I did get to achieve my dream for which

I'm very, very grateful. But it is a total survival story and there were a lot of obstacles and, you know, despair on the way to getting that dream. Yeah. Yeah. I think what happens when us three-dimensional people get made into two-dimensional, you know, on-screen avatars essentially, is we lose all of our three-dimensional life and the dissonance between those things can be so jarring. I think that's such a good point because by definition, journalism requires you

to be two-dimensional because really you're just a conduit. You're supposed to, the way we were trained in the 80s in journalism is don't make yourself the story. You know, you are just the platform, you're helping, you're the mouthpiece to help somebody who doesn't have a voice or who wants to amplify their voice.

And I get it. I believe that. I think that's been great. But at some point, and it was somewhere around, I think, George Floyd's killing for me, that I started thinking, you know, it would be really helpful if I could say to some of these folks on the screen, I've been there. You know, I know what it's like to be broke. I know what it's like.

I somehow became close right after George Floyd's killing because I interviewed his brother, Philonis, I think we were the first national interview that he did. And his grief was so raw. It was the day after the killing. His grief was so raw, but his voice was already so profound. And I was just struck by his strength. And somehow I've become friends with George Floyd's girlfriend. And I wanted to be, when I interviewed her and I wanted to be able to say, I get it. You know, I have been in love with people who've struggled with substance abuse and people who've been broken. I've been broken. I know what it's like to be desperate and I know what it's like to lose people. But that's not our job. So I felt like I had to keep people at an arm's length

and not share what I knew to be true from my own story. And so that was kind of motivation to actually publish it, you know? That's really cool. How did you first get into journalism? So I was a teenager and I really, really wanted to be seen and heard. You know, I wanted to be seen and heard my whole life. I mean, from some of my greatest memories. In the book, I talk about how starting at about five years old, I had this invisible cameraman that started following me around everywhere. And I would talk to my invisible cameraman and be like, did you just see that? I hope you got a shot of that. That was crazy, you know? And so I've had to, in writing the book, analyze what was that phenomenon that I was doing? And I think it was wanting to

be validated, wanting to be seen and heard, and installing some like witness to my life. I was an only child. So I was lonely some of the time. And I think I wanted like, I don't know, supervision or a witness or something. And so I always had that dream to be seen and heard. And then it crystallized when I was 15. I was watching Phil Donnie, who was who was like the quintessential talk show host of, you know, the 80s. And he was running around his studio with a microphone. And he just looked so energetic and relevant and powerful. And I thought, what's that job called? And somebody told me it's called broadcast journalist. And I was like, oh, I want to be a broadcast journalist. Wow. From that moment on, I just set my sights on that and looked for schools and majored in

broadcast journalism and decided that was for me. That's so cool. We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors. Something I'm really curious about as a journalism fan is the differences between these big networks and you've been at the biggest. You know, you worked at Fox for years prior to joining CNN in 2014. Was it? Because, again, you said earlier, you know,

sometimes people will look at you up there as an anchor and think it's all easy. Was it totally bonkers to move from one news network to arrival? What was that experience like for you behind the scenes? It was bonkers. I mean, it was bonkers not just because I moved from one network to arrival, because I think that people can go from ABC News to NBC News or NBC to CBS and it not being as much of a culture shock.

But going from Fox to CNN was a particularly, you know, daring hat trick or whatever you want to call that, you know, backbend. I felt personally that my journalism skills were portable, that I tried to do good journalism at Fox. I tried to always have the facts. I tried to come equipped with the evidence for whomever I was interviewing, and I just transferred my skills to CNN. for me, it wasn't like, I didn't feel I had to relearn anything, but I think it was total cognitive dissonance for the viewers because to them, Fox has trained people to think that you're on a team. You know, Fox is really a tribe, and they made news kind of tribal in a way that it had never been before. You know, people didn't, it wasn't like you were making a life choice

if you switched from CBS to NBC, but Fox really had hard, for followers. So it felt like, I think, a betrayal to the viewers, and I had to kind of educate them. I mean, some of them have been so kind, I must say to me, and have, you know, reached out on social media or whatever, saying they missed me and they loved me on there. And I've really appreciated that. And I've had to kind of educate them and say, like, I'm doing the same thing I always did. And I didn't want to be part of a team. I just wanted to help people tell their stories. And so, you know, for me, it wasn't that shocking, but not many people do it. Yeah, well, I think it's actually quite, when I have examined my own thoughts about it, as I've observed the transition for you, I actually think it's hopeful.

Because as you said, Fox has made the news so tribal. And, you know, maybe not everybody knows this, but those of us who are obsessed with the news do, that, you know, they've been sued in court for lying to viewers. And their lawyers say, well, any sober news viewer knows we're not a news program, we're an opinion show. And I go like, oh, my God, this is the legal defense in court. What is happening here? And I find it really refreshing that as a journalist, you can say, I'm doing journalism everywhere and anywhere. I'm not going to abide by this very strange development into tribal coverage. And, you know, you've talked about this. so I hope it's okay for me to ask,

but you talked so inspiringly about what you faced at Fox. You were one of many women there who faced sexual harassment and abuse, and I've been so inspired by the way you all talked about that because my co-workers on my first show and I, and many of us on my next show, had to talk about this stuff as well. Was that part of why you wanted to leave, or was it that it was getting so tribal

that you didn't want to be there anymore? Or was it sort of just a whole package of this is awful, I got to go? I think it got worse. I think that it got worse as Fox got more successful. I think that Roger Ailes, the boss for whom I worked,

felt that he saw what the audience wanted. And what he started doing was giving the audience what they wanted at the expense of truth. at the expense of facts because what to him the best currency the biggest currency was winning and ratings sure we all like ratings i get it that's the business model however at what cost and so he started you know allowing different you know presenters i don't want to call them anchors because they they at fox they use this language as though they're a news network but they don't follow

the rules of newsrooms. Of course, the viewers don't know that because nobody is giving them a tutorial on journalism and journalism 101 and exactly what the rules of journalism are. But they don't use solid sources or credible sources as we found out with the Dominion lawsuit, as you just referenced, and they end up having to pay $787 million as a result of not using credible sources. So that just isn't allowed at other networks because there are rules of journalism, for one. So the idea that just keep giving the audience what they want, keep giving the viewers what they want, it ends up hurting, obviously, the viewers.

Because the viewers don't end up knowing the truth. And when, long behold, somebody like Donald Trump says that he actually won the election, but he lost by $7 million, they take up arms and show up at the Capitol. So, I mean, it has a real life immediate cause and effect it's bad for everybody. I mean, people are in prison right now

because they believed those lies. So I could see that Roger, you know, I would get in trouble there because he didn't like when I would point out, I don't know, positive benefits or how many people would benefit from Obamacare. He told me to stop talking about that. I was like, hmm.

And he told me like when I would say how many people were uninsured, he would be like, use a different number, a lower number. I was like, what? Where are you getting your numbers, you know? And so I didn't like that it was totally untethered from reality. I wasn't comfortable with that ever. And frankly, the sexual harassment stuff, which is gross, wasn't even the half of it. I mean, I just didn't, I didn't lie into the mission statement anymore of kind of tricking the viewers to just to keep them coming back from more and keeping them outraged. I don't, I didn't think any of that was helpful.

And I would say history has proven that I was right. Absolutely. That has to feel nice. well except that I mean it's a mess yeah it's a mess I mean but for you individually I can't take that much joy in being vindicated

because it's it's gone to hell I mean the whole business model as I said has been so pernicious on so many levels

that the fact that I was right doesn't feel that great and which is why I try I'm so glad you're asking about it because I do try to talk about it wherever I can hoping that It can permeate the different silos, but I don't really know that I'm being that effective as

just a sole voice about this. Well, it's an awfully hard Goliath to go up against. And, you know, what you're referencing the sort of image I get is it's like they created this immensely toxic thing. And the train's left the station. Like, you can't really close Pandora's box once you open it. and I think we as a society will have a lot of work to do to reprioritize truth and we kind of have to build the plane while we're flying it and that's a bit scary but I'm so grateful that you know you're

talking about this every chance you get because you're right you know people need to know and they they do need to understand the difference um and the legal loophole. that some folks like Roger Ailes have used for so long to try to trick people, to try to create this tribalism, which, you know, we've seen these really detrimental side effects of. Was it, I understand, you know, I think anyway, I understand the immense pressure you must have felt at times, you know, when being told, change the numbers, don't talk about the benefits of health care. I'm sure they hated, you know, the simple data point that it actually costs us so much more money in the U.S. to just not insure everyone than it would to have universal

health care. I'm sure that wasn't a popular. I was supposed to stifle that. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Was it how though as, because these are grand ideas and these are big truths and they affect the nation. But you're still just a singular here. human. How did you navigate your personal experience of being in that rock in a hard place where you were told not to tell the truth on air? Or you were asked to say things that went against what you know to be true and what you believe in. Was it just so immensely conflicting? Yeah, it was. It was really hard. The way I did it was I would just try to be armed with facts every time before I went on the air.

So I did a four-hour weekend show. And it started at 6 a.m. So, I mean, from 3 a.m. till 6 a.m. I would just be with my producer trying to research the hell out of every one of the topics that we would be covering or any interview that I'd be doing just so that I could, you know, I knew that we didn't have, I knew we had guests that often fudged the facts. So I would try to be armed to be able to say, well, actually, what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says, is this, you know, and I would try to do that the best I could, but I also felt badly for my

producers because they knew the same marching orders. And there are a ton of, I really liked the people at Fox. There are a ton of good people at Fox. There are a ton of people who are just trying to get a paycheck and feed their families and pay their mortgage. And they, like, they're willing to go along with the party line because they have bigger fish to fry and they're at lives. And so I knew that they were having to take the heat, you know, Roger Ailes would call into the control room and say like, tell her to stop saying that or tell her to say this. And then they would frantically get in my ear and tell me to say something. I'd be like, show me the facts. And I'm happy to say it. Bring me the facts. And I'll say it. And they would be like, Roger's going to call again.

There was so much, everybody was, you know, Roger ruled with an iron fist. And there's a lot of fear with that kind of leadership. It's not collaborative. So it was. was a challenge. It was definitely a challenge. And I didn't always, I don't want to pretend that I always did it right. I didn't. There were definitely times that I too echoed the talking points when I didn't have all the facts buttoned up or when I just wanted it to be easier and not have to be called onto the carpet by Roger. So it's a challenge. I mean, basically it's what happens when you have, you know, somebody with kind of tyrannical thinking and all the soldiers fall in line. I mean, It's funny how quickly you can be co-opted by that in our structure.

Well, and we've just seen it historically over and over and over again. So I think it is why it's so important for us to talk about ways that we figure out how to tell the truth. Has it been an immense relief once, I guess, the culture shock were off, moving over to CNN? Is it a completely different ship? I mean, I know that even last year there was some controversy about how it was. was supposedly moving more right because of, you know, whomever bought it. I feel like I can't keep track of what corporations are, you know,

overtaking what conglomerates anymore. But you're there. So can you tell us what it's like? Yeah. I mean, basically the wonderful thing about CNN is that it's always fact-based. So it doesn't matter which boss comes in or comes out. I mean, obviously we all have our favorites and we all have the people that we work well with. But the mission statement has never changed.

So you still follow the rules of journalism. You still have your facts all sewn up. You still are fact-checking. We have on-staff fact-checkers. We have standards and practices in actual office that make sure we're following the rules of journalism, which Fox doesn't have. And so all of that was still in play, regardless of whatever flux, you know, we're going through.

And so that is comforting. I mean, just to be able to get back to the rules. rules and never to have any boss. I've now had three different bosses at CNN, ever have any boss call me and say like, no, I want you to say it this way. Wow. That is lovely to hear as a watcher of the news. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. what pressure do you feel or is it just sort of something you don't even notice anymore being the person who sits like this across from us and and delivers the news into our homes every day does it does it uptick during an election year or or is that when everybody

puts their heads down and and really cancels out the noise i i wonder what it's like on the inside? I think that starting in about, I got to see it in 2014, and in 2015, when Donald Trump started running, I really realized like, oh, good, my skills of having to research every morning and make sure that I'm totally spot on and have all the facts buttoned up are really going to come in handy here because, you know, he would say so many contradictory things. And so I already had the skill set to know if I was interviewing him or one of his surrogates or whoever was running. I mean, you know, I did the same practice, whether it was Hillary Clinton, whether it was Ben Carson that I was interviewing who matter, you know.

And so I felt very equipped by then to interview them. And I certainly felt during COVID, I really felt my purpose. You know, I felt the purpose every morning of us as journalists being the first. voice you hear, and I knew that everybody was waking up and going, okay, how many people have died, how many people are hospitalized, have hospitals run out of beds, how close are we to a vaccine, is the FDA going to fast track it? Like, I knew that everybody was counting on us for real important information every day. So even when I was tired, I just felt, for the past many years, 10, 9 years, I have felt the, you know, there were times in my career where

we would do some happy talk and some, you know, funny kickers and all stuff. And I love that stuff. But the news has gotten really serious in the past nine years. And I've definitely felt kind of the responsibility that I have to the viewers. So I wouldn't say it's pressure. I would say it's purpose. And that has been a good feeling. That's so special.

What would you say, you know, as the expert, what would you say to voters who feel confused about what news outlets they can trust because we have seen such a proliferation of misinformation. There are targeted disinformation campaigns that people are spending a whole lot of money on to try to confuse folks. And, you know, it really seems like the untruths travel around the Internet very quickly and it's very hard to clean them up. So, you know, somebody who really knows the inside baseball here, what would you say to folks who are feeling scared about where to turn for trusted information? Yeah, I don't blame them. It's really hard. It's a deluge of information. It's too much information. It's like the fire hose that people are drinking from every morning.

And don't blame them for not understanding which ones are legitimate, which ones aren't legitimate. I think is we're in a really tough time right now. I mean, I try to tell people you must go to a trusted news source that has a track record of winning journalism awards, of winning Pulitzer Prize, winning, you know, the Edward R. Murdo Awards, like they have a track record and they, you must go to a place where if they get it wrong, because we're all human. So obviously we do get it wrong sometimes. But one of the tenets of journalism is you disclose it when you get it wrong and you

apologize and you take responsibility. And Fox doesn't do that, but the viewers don't know that because Fox doesn't report that they had to pay the $787 million to Dominion. So their viewers don't know that. So it's very, very hard to make inroads in those silos because people don't understand that. And so, I mean, I, in other words, it's not to me, it's not about a political spectrum. You know, there are obviously more conservative, excellent journalistic newspapers and places and more progressive, but it's just about which ones are fact-based. But it's really hard to feel.

I mean, we're living in a very kind of surreal time, and it's dangerous, and I don't know how to get people to understand the difference in some, you know, crackpot website that they're looking at versus real news. Right. Well, and this is such a layer on top of the already very draining experience of working in the media. You know, you talk about purpose and that sort of fulfillment, which is so beautiful. And it's tough. You know, when you have to be on the air at 6 a.m., so you're up at 3, it shifts your whole life, you know, what you're available for, what things you get to participate in with your family. or friends, it really does become the thing your world has to revolve around. So how do you recharge? How do you set boundaries, you know, for yourself as Allison before you have to then go up and be the person we turn to for coverage? When I was doing the morning show, which I did

for almost seven years at CNN, and I did it for many, many years before that at Fox, it was really energetically hard for me. There are some people who are morning people. I'm not one of them. Oh, me neither. It was really hard to be on my A game and to have that much energy. But I would do it again because I do love my career and I did feel the purpose of it. So when the red light would go on at six in the morning, I was present. I was there. We had lots of, I always looked for kind of the moment that broke through the screen. you know, the moment of spontaneity, the joke between my co-anchor and me, the moment that a guest said something that was so profound or that was so newsmaking or whatever. And there were, each show was riddled with those things. So I got a lot of like sustenance, you know, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. And then at 9.01, I would like stagger off the set and make it to my office and fall like face first onto the sofa and just sleep like talk about the the underbelly you know the the unglomerous

side of what you're about like movie making if anybody came I'm like sleeping you know like on something with like full face of makeup like in my clothing and that's how I would deal with it I would just try to get the two hours of sleep that I hadn't gotten at night and then I would be able to go home and be with my family, but I never felt fully present, like fully energetically present with my family. And so after, you know, almost seven years at CNN, I had to, I just physically wanted to stop and I wanted to move to a different day part in the afternoon because it's just really hard for me. And so I don't know how like, you know, the Katie Kirk's of the world did it for so long. it was a total ass kicker.

Yeah. What are some of your favorite memories when you think back over the course of your career? What are the things that jump to mind, you know, stories or places you've traveled that still just make you feel excited? Well, I did love the chemistry with my co-hosts. In general, I've really liked my co-hosts, and in general, they've really made me laugh and there have been special, spontaneous moments, and that, you know, forges a real bond. So John Berman and I did the morning show together, and we, you know, we still, he'll text me one word and we'll laugh historically because I know exactly what he's talking about or I'll text him some memory and we, you know, we laugh.

Like that's, it's kind of because you're together, you know, so early in the morning, it's a pretty intimate bond that you have with these guys. So I always really enjoyed that. And one of the things that I really liked is that I got to meet some of my childhood idols. You know, I had the privilege of being able to interview some of these guys who were on my wall in posters, you know, growing up. And like, if I could have told 10-year-old Allison that she would be interviewing Kiss, you know, who I had the poster of in my bedroom, I would have been so. excited and I was so excited like when those any of those guys any of my the people that I admired from afar as a child came in I was giddy basically like David Cassidy who you're too young to know but he was in the Partridge family and he was a heart throb and he I loved him so

much I was like skipping around him when he came in and it had been a few decades since David Cassidy like a fan girl like super fanning and he was I believe scared at my room. Yeah, it is always a little hard when you have those moments and you're like, I'm supposed to be cool because I'm also on TV, but I can't be. No. Hello. And now for our sponsors.

So I love hearing the personal anecdotes. It's so fun. How did you, or maybe how do you think? about the differences between Alice and the journalist and Alice and the author. Because you talk about, you know, I read so many articles and watched some interviews with you talking about what it was like to write this memoir. And combat love is so beautiful. And, you know, you're not covering someone's story. This is your story.

And it's so vulnerable. And it's, it's so important. But how did you reconcile opening up like this? Did, do you feel like your training as a journalist made you ready for, for more of being exposed and sharing? Or is it totally terrifying and exciting and you're learning as you go? Well, thank you for saying all that. I really appreciate that. It was at first terrifying.

At first, the concept of it was terrifying. So I knew I wanted to write it because I felt that I had to write it for my own closure. And I had a lot of different pieces rattling around in my head from my childhood and my teenage years that felt unfinished. And so I knew that I wanted to write it and put it in a timeline and have it chronologically make sense to me and understand my own personal arc. But that's a very different exercise than publishing it. So I had to write it and I did that.

And I at first was like, you know, really scared to publish it because I thought, who wants to see the diary pages of their anchor? Like, anchors in particular, I think, are sort of neutered know-it-all. And so I thought, like, it's gross if you peel back the curtain too far on your news anchor because, as we all learned with Matt Lauer, we don't want to know any sort of details of their life and if they're imperfect because what they present can look so seamless and, as I said, polish. So I was thinking that it wouldn't be a good idea.

And then I wrote it and I just wrote and I liked that exercise of writing it and it was helpful to me. And as I said, with some news stories, some particularly intense, painful news stories. I was asking people to be so vulnerable with me, you know? And again, Alice Floyd was like so just incredibly profoundly vulnerable and raw. And like, I'm asking that of people and I'm still keeping my mask on and my trusty neutral stance. And I just at some point thought, I think maybe the viewers can handle it. I think maybe they will be able to handle that they're, you know, polished anchor has a lot of blemishes and a lot, a messy, a messy pass that has

included some pain. And maybe it will even be helpful in these divided times. Maybe they'll, that'll be a bridge somehow. Yeah. And so I just, I don't know, I came to just trust the process more and think that people would like it. And I'm really relieved at how well it's been received because it turns out that it is a universal story, you know, to a survival story. I mean, everybody has some survival story. They look different, but everybody has one. And it turns out that it's universal, and that's been very comforting to me. Yeah.

I think that's a really beautiful way to put it, a survival story. Because as you mentioned earlier, particularly when you become a public figure, nobody knows what it took you to get there. and you know learning that you left home at 16 you'd have this really complicated relationship you know with your mother and that in many ways writing this book required you to to really sit down and communicate about your family history what was that like because it sounds incredible and totally wild what was what was it like for you to go okay mom we got We've got to sit down and talk about this stuff.

It was hard. I mean, it was hard. She was resistant. My mother, it was born in 1940. She's literally part of something called the silent generation. So I'm Gen X. She's the silent generation. And so now, you know, we've, the pendulum has song so far to, you know,

millennials and Gen Z that are quite open and confessional and everything. But it's been a long time coming, you know, to get there. the continuum was at the other end for her. So she really didn't want, she was, she was happy to, not happy to, she was willing to talk to me about it, but she certainly didn't want a lot of it made public. And so it took us years to try to get comfortable with that and to reconcile it. But what my book also includes is a lot of family secrets. You know, both my parents had family secrets that they kept quiet about.

And so that, it turns out, did not help in parenting me. And it turns out that you think you're keeping a secret and you might think that you've stuffed it down and it's all within you. But it ends up having this, you know, these repercussions on your children, whether you state it or not, something unconscious happens generationally. Yeah. And they passed along these kind of. of confusing puzzle pieces to me where there were pieces missing. And I sensed as a child,

something isn't quite right around here, but I don't know what it is. There are puzzle pieces missing. And I really didn't, I mean, I didn't find out about them until I was an adult, you know, until later in life. And it would have been really helpful to communicate, actually, about some of these things instead of having family secrets. Yeah. So how do you learn to do that in real time while you're writing a book? Did you have like a great therapist? Did you have an editor who was helping?

Who helped you do this? Well, I've had a therapist. I mean, I have relied on therapy not all the time throughout my life, but definitely at different hard times. And so I know enough about therapy to know that. it's helpful. And so when I was going to be talking to my mom about this, I said, I'm going to find a therapist for us to talk this through. That's great. I knew that there would be, it would be better to have a neutral third voice, you know, because mothers and daughters

can have fraught relationships, regardless of how close they are. My mother and I are close. But I knew that that would help and that did really help. But I also just think that, you know, I didn't write it until I had enough distance and enough maturity and how much maturity and had my own kids and my own teenagers, and that helped too. I couldn't obviously have written this book at 20, and I didn't know these things at 20. But in going back and excavating my life and finding out about the secrets that my mother held and my father held, it's actually given me, you know, tons of closure. I mean, finding missing puzzle pieces is very healing. And what I've been saying on book tour when I go around to people is like, if there's a way

that you can find closure, I don't think you have to write a memoir, but If you can find closure with people, do it because unfinished business will not at you. You know, whether it's your parents, whether it's a sibling, whether it's a past love, whether it's a friendship. You know, I'm just a big believer in tying up loose ends. I think that that is a much more emotionally and mentally healthier space. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, really good advice.

And I imagine these are things you learned in real time while. writing this was was it a cathartic experience yeah very it was very cathartic it was very cathartic it was very cathartic to go back and put everything into some order for me rather than just floating around my head and it was cathartic to understand now as an adult woman i have a different perspective on my mother's choices so my mother moved me from you know what i consider the epicenter of my universe, Shrewsbury, New Jersey, to Bellingham, Washington, 3,000 miles away where I knew no one, and basically on a whim. And I was very devastated and resentful. And, you know, now talking about it, so she was 41, she was looking for a new life. I was 15,

not looking for a new life at all, very much to put down roots in my hometown. And so, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, lived that with her. So I knew the story, basically, but going back as an adult woman and talking to her about it, about the despair that she was feeling and how trapped she was feeling, you know, obviously it gave me a whole new perspective. And that has really helped. And her hearing, you know, why it was so devastating to me. All of that has really helped our relationship. And I'm very glad, I mean, you've probably heard me say this because I've said it a lot on the book tour, but my mother's one, you know, request was, can't you wait till I'm dead? That's what she kept saying while I was writing it. Can't you wait until I'm dead? And I'm so glad I did not wait until she was dead because she ended up being really helpful in putting the pieces together. That's so cool. You talk a lot in the book about the power of music in your life. And you know, you just were mentioning being the 10 year old with the kiss poster on your wall. How did music influence you as you were writing this?

Were there certain artists you listen to or were you going back and like listening to every artist from the time period of the stories you were working on? What was that part of the journey? Music is so transformative to me that I had to be very careful with what I listened to while I was writing it because it's so evocative that if I put on a song from a different era, like if I played something from the 90s while I was writing about 1981, it wouldn't help. And if I played something from the summer in New Jersey of 1982, but I was waiting about the winter of Bellingham, it would like, you know, scramble my central nervous system. And so I, and furthermore, I didn't want to dilute, you know, sometimes if you hear a song over and over and over again, the abocativeness gets a little diluted, and so with shrapnel, so shrapnel is the band that I fell in love with when I was 13. they were a local punk rock band. They were just the coolest guys in the world. And it's very hard to hear a Shrapnel song

because they, you know, we didn't have the internet then and they don't exist on Spotify. And it's very hard to hear it. But I found on Facebook some cassette tapes from live shows of theirs. And I kept it. I knew it would be Pandora's box if I played it. So I kept it in my cabinet for four or five years until I was ready to write about it

because I knew that it would be like an instant time machine for me. And it's so funny, the book is called Combat Love. That was Shrapnel's first single. And when I hear it, I just heard it. They played it last night at a book event. And I mean, I hear it once, you know, every 10 years. And I just heard it. And this is how they started the book event.

I was at like a book talk. And I was like, excuse me, I need to compose myself again. like they played it and I couldn't it like I became like undone you know hearing the song again so I had to be very careful with music because it's a real like pure signal for me and I didn't want to screw around with it while I was writing I could only listen to specific things oh my goodness does music serve as that sort of transportation device for you

when you're reporting as well? I mean, yes. Like when I was doing the morning show at CNN, every morning I would come out and the guys, the crew,

would be playing a song that they either knew really bummed me out because we had a joke. They love Rush. And I, no girl likes Rush. Rush is like,

it's like what a dog whistle is to a dog. Like you can't, play girls don't understand rush it doesn't it's our ears aren't made for it so they would play that because they knew that it like got my goat and they thought it was hilarious so they would either play that or they would play one of my old like kiss sometimes um you know one of the camera guys would play kiss for me or he'd play the scorpions because he knew that that was one of the songs from belingham that i listened to and so i would have to say to them like guys i have to focus yeah making me time travel

right now. Like, I can't be in high school mindset. Like, turn it off for a second. And so that was, yes, for sure. Like, I, yeah, I'm susceptible to music, very susceptible. That's so cool. Well, you know, you're traveling, obviously, and talking about the book. How are the book events going? Are you enjoying it? So much. So much. It's just, it's really fun to be able to go out in the world and to talk about this. And what's really funny is that, you know, some publishers who didn't want the book, you know, who read the book, they liked my writing, they liked me, but they weren't willing to take a risk on the book because they said, we don't think, we don't believe that like your news fans, your viewers will follow you for like a punk rock teenage story. We don't see the

connection. And what has, and I believe them. I thought, okay, I understand. It's off brand. I get it. This is not the typical journalism story. And then what's happened is that I in traveling around the country, I was just in California for a couple of days in San Francisco and in Los Angeles with women, primarily my age, what they can, they are, they connect with it because it's not really about a punk rock band. It's about a coming of age story. And when you are going to decide that you're going to go your own way, regardless of what your parents had set up for you.

and how you're going to survive by going your own way. And like I said, you know, it's a story of obstacles and survival. And I've just realized everybody has that. So everybody is taking some piece of the book and being able to relate to it. So I'm very heartened that, you know, it ends up being a universal story. Yeah. I often think about how it's the specific that is universal. It's the way we see ourselves and things, not because the details match, but because

the feelings line up. Yeah. I mean, I didn't really understand that until now, you know, like for instance, I recently read Jeanette McCurdy's, you know, bestselling. So good. And I didn't have, I never had a needing disorder. I don't relate to that. Do I relate to her wanting to always please her mother and perform for her mother and her mother being this larger than life magnetic character? Yes, I do. So the book spoke to me, you know? Yeah. So now I get that the specifics are just the authenticity of the book, but there are larger themes that we all relate to. Yeah, that's so special. So when you sit from this point, you know, it's such a big thing to put a book out in the world and you look at the year ahead and it's a big moment for you personally and we are in an election year. There's just, there's an awful lot going on for us, you know, from the micro to the macro. What feels like your work in progress for 2024? Well, that's really interesting. I think that what happens when you put out a book, you never know.

where it's going to go. You never know. A book takes on its own trajectory and its own life. And books open doors that you couldn't have imagined. There are a calling card in some way to just get you into, you know, like being able to talk to you. Like that's wonderful. That's a calling card that I wouldn't have known a month ago.

And that's wonderful and so delightful. And so the work in progress for me is like, I don't feel I've written that out, you know, I'm still on the cusp of this wave of seeing where it leads and I'm really enjoying that process. And in terms of the news, I've lived this movie before of this election. And I don't want to repeat the lessons that we learned the last time. I mean, I feel like this calls for a new way of thinking, a new way of framing it. I haven't fastened upon that yet. But I just know that we've learned a lot, so I don't want to have to, I don't want to repeat old mistakes or old patterns with how I report the news. I want to really talk about the stakes. You know, I want to

talk about, I think that sometimes in an election year, we get focused on the horse race, we get focused on the excitement of it. But this time around, I really want us to mostly talk about the stakes. And so that's what I'm trying to focus on. That's really great. That feels like a good place for us all to meet. I hope so. I mean too. Thank you so much, Alice. And this has just been so cool. Thank you, Sophia. It's so great to talk to you. Thanks for understanding the book and reading the book and just, you know, being so relatable. I really appreciate that. I appreciate you. It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us. This is an IHeart podcast.